Teen Choice Awards 2012: Improbably Adorable

There should maybe be more here to be critical of, but why, when it’s all so much fun? Because all the ambitions and strategies are so naked and forced and everyone has just been through a metamorphosis and it’s SO DAMN CUTE. Imagine if your teen angst that you slammed around your bedroom about was adorable to someone? It’s unthinkable. I’m betraying my 15-year-old self.

But I must have rounded a corner into geriatricity because I found the whole thing kind of awkward-charming. Every second moment is awkward and cringe-inducing and will be the thing that these “stars” flagellate themselves about as soon as they leave and for the rest of the night.

Case in point? This announcement: “Please welcome to the stage, two up-and-coming actresses, Laura and Vanessa Marano!” Vanessa Marano is a legitimate actress. She’s had arcs on Gilmore Girls and Dexter, but she’s one of the two leads on Switched At Birth. That counts as being able to be introduced un-qualified. I guarantee everyone in that room has seen that show, even if they’re only waiting for Pretty Little Liars to come on.

But …but… someone, somewhere – my money’s on a stage mother – went to work on one of the producers. “You know, it would be really great to have Laura, Vanessa’s sister, present too. Her agent will be giving you a call.” Someone somewhere owes someone else a favour to get this Laura kid’s career off the ground, so TCA capitulates, but then how do you introduce them? “The star of Switched At Birth and her sister, Laura!” Nope. So it becomes “two up-and-coming actresses”, and Marano the elder gets screwed. Right?

Or how about when Pattinson gave away the surfboard he won? Happy not to have to carry it backstage, of course, and effortlessly winning the love of a million tweens like he actually needed it. So then Stewart gives hers. So then poor Taylor Lautner, the fifthest fifth wheel ever, doesn’t know what to do, or doesn’t want to give it away, or someone on stage tells him not to, so he spends the next six awful minutes carefully placing it on the stage and, since nobody wants to look at him, just sort of adjusting so he wouldn’t have to look back up.

Or how Justin Bieber didn’t really know if he was allowed to clap when Demi Lovato came out?

Or how Miranda Cosgrove had that camera in her face acknowledging she had won the “I’m actually in university” award and kept nodding at it?

Or when Jordin Sparks came out and totally expected a bigger cheer for her weight loss, and nobody cared?

Or how when Justin Bieber finished his (awesome, I’m not lying) performance and was like “and everyone, just believe” and no cheer went up so he had to repeat himself? BELIEVE. I was dying laughing.

And then the finale. And poor Carly Rae is off-key from the beginning. And maybe because she insisted on singing live, or maybe she insisted on singing live because of this, but she can’t dance a single step, and there are all these guys flailing around her in suspenders, for God’s sake, and she can’t even stage-flirt with them like she knows she should, because she knows she’s barely bringing this performance, even though, frankly, she almost doesn’t need to perform it anymore because everyone else can and will do it for her. And I LOVED her Get-In-Shape-Girl white sneakers and I won’t hear a word against them.

See? Don’t you feel giggly and warm and kind of supportive of the crazy kids? Awkward is an equal opportunity mistress, after all.